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Despite the extremely fickle nature of the art world at large for abstracts, the works have a very palpable potency to anyone who has the right rods and cones to pick up color.  In large cities, where the contemporary art world demands a kind of stern adherence to a new post-structuralism that needs to maintain an aesthetic that is almost anti-beauty at times, these works can stand as a kind of oppositional statement, and invite in the kinds of visual pleasure that are, at root, more populist than any other ideology.  The sense of design and splendor of the New York boutique hotels have a similar effect, and it is a welcome sight to any eye, but especially tired ones.

It’s rather a delightful thing, then, when artists like Beatriz Milhazes can find a home for their works here.  For this Brazillian-born visual artist, however, it’s not just one single gallery, but her work is represented in some of the big cultural giants.  With works in the permanent collections of MOMA, the Guggenheim, and the Met, it might be safe to say that she has landed.  In many respects, the work here is almost gravy for a career that has seen plenty of opportunities to reach fresh eyes.  Her work has showings all over the world, is popular in Brazil, and has a secure position in the Parisian art scene as well.

What’s truly extraordinary about her work, however, is the acute sense of design.  At first glance, it might be easy for art snobs to dismiss it as simple bright colors put together to attract attention, surely, but devoid of content.  That is certainly not the case, as a closer look reveals a great deal of attention to the history of abstract art, drawing on a wealth of European influences while remaining firmly in a Brazilian Tropicale sensibility.  This is but another example of how Brazilian culture is continuing to gain force in popular conceptions, being recognized at last for its deep and evolving contribution to global visual culture.

Missouri has a great deal of interesting and significant cultural landmarks, icons and major historic institutions and establishments. It also, and to the delight of many of the people who visit the state, has a large number of ghost towns within the state line. If only those towns could talk, they would have some interesting stories about the civil war days and early days of Missouri’s development. Touring ghost towns is a favorite pastime of many people and quite a few of the tourist to the state enjoy visiting the various communities that once thrived. The sleeping accommodations are better in the contemporary cities than what can be found in the ghost towns, though the souls of former residence may continue to reside there.

Old Franklin is one of the listed ghost towns in the state and it is located near Boonville, and appropriately New Franklin, on State Route 87. The region experiences hot humid summers and pretty cold winters so if you’d like to visit, it is best to try and do so in the fall. This town was left vacant when New Franklin drew all of the residents away from it in a very short period of time.

Cane Creek is another deserted town that lost a lot of its reputation with its residents. There is not a lot of information on this town and not too much of it remains. It is located six miles west of Popular Bluff. Jordan is yet another old town that is believed to have been a silver mining town at one time. Not a lot is left here either though the small town church remains and says Jordan on it. There is also a cemetery out back and a couple of other buildings, but not much of anything else. This is only a beginning demonstration of the types of ghost towns that exist throughout the state of Missouri. More information can be found in the more popular and inhabited cities as well as in various places on the Internet. And it should be noted that there are a great deal more ghost towns than what is mentioned here.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you’re on vacation your meals are an essential aspect of experiencing the area or city that you’re visiting and other times you’ve just been enjoying yourself so much that you suddenly realize that you’re starving and just need to get something, anything to eat? Well, sometimes you even encounter a sort of best of both worlds regarding that question. This means that while all you’re doing is trying to satisfy a great hungry and stabilize blood sugar levels and perhaps prevent a fainting episode, you also end up experiencing some of the local cuisine that is absolutely fabulous and gives you a whole new insight into the culture that you’re visiting. This is definitely the case with Jenny who was in Singapore recently and while she isn’t what you would call a person with a large appetite she like everyone else does get hungry sometimes and when she does she can eat, well, a great deal of food.

Such was the case after she spent a long day golfing at one of Singapore’s public golf courses. She was vacationing with two of her college friends who had promised themselves that they would treat each other to this great vacation a year after their college graduation. And there they were enjoying themselves as if they were back in the sophomore year cutting class and enjoying a day in the city. Meanwhile, Jenny wasn’t hungry when the other two wanted to grab some lunch so she decided she would wait until the next meal. However, her appetite caught up with her before the evening hour and she desperately wanted to find a restaurant in Singapore that could satisfy her growing hunger. As it turns out she didn’t even need to wait to find an indoor seating restaurant but could detect the aroma of a hawker food stall that she had noticed earlier. She had been curious before but was almost desperate now and eagerly requested a dish of the quick served noodle bowl. Her two friends had also worked up an appetite and they enjoyed a satisfying dinging experience at the East Coast Lagoon Food Village that also introduced them to a major aspect of Singapore dining culture.

I love hiphop.  I’ve always love hiphop.  I grew up listening to the old school stuff, and I like to breathe it in wherever I can find it, and it’s always everywhere and all the time.  It’s still one of the biggest musical industries in the world, and it’s been a global phenomenon for a number of years.  Here, in NYC, it’s got its home, from the origins in the Bronx in the late 1960s, but it’s traveled everywhere.  South Africa, France, Saudi Arabia, and even Germany, are all places where this music rules.  New players come into the game all the time, and there’s a fierce competition here, but there’s also a lot of love and fun for everyone.

But for all the places to travel, I still like to go to New York the best.  It’s got great hotels, and there’s always this old camaraderie that welcomes me back into the fold.  I like to find out what’s new in town, and I like to touch base with how my icons are doing by getting the word on the streets.  One of my all-time favorites is Missy Elliott .  Her work has been some of the most impressive and consistently refreshing music in the genre.  She’s not from New York herself, being from the humble state of Virginia, but she moved here in the early 90s with her group Fayze.

That’s enough to make her a NY hiphop artist, because the years that followed were amazing. This was a remarkable change of life direction, considering how rough her childhood was.  What makes me so impressed with her, though, isn’t just her audacity, although that’s a part of it.  I love her performance of bravado, and even more I love how humble she remains.  She’s never been afraid to team up with good people to get good work made, even if it means she won’t get all the credit.  She’s about the music, and to really make things move forward, you have to get over yourself.

As a conflict resolution specialist, I have been involved in some very difficult situations in my career before.  I work with both teenagers and adults, and it’s more difficult to work with adults, in my opinion, because they don’t play as fair.  They’re also much more prone to becoming offended if there are any perceived insults, and these usually are only perceived, existing in the offended party’s mind alone.  And they also seem much more easily capable of resorting to threats of violence.  I prefer adolescents, as unstable as those hormonal outbursts can be.  They have not yet learned to make the most of their ability to inflict harm in this world.

There haven’t been many cases as extraordinarily difficult as the one that brought me to Fort Wayne.  A reservation in a hotel had already been set up for me, so I would be able to land and get over to the site as soon as I could.  I didn’t even stop to shower, because I’d heard that things were getting very heated.  I made my way to the community center, and even from the outside I could hear that there was a very large commotion going on.

Very few people would have guessed that the director of the choir would be able to hold the wrestling coach in a headlock for very long.  Even on a very bad day for the coach, a very short minute would be the most.  But it was obvious that this was going on for quite awhile, and I wasn’t sure if anyone had tried to break it up.  The schedules had been mixed up, someone explained to me, and the concert and the meet were both set for the same days, and no one wanted to give.  At times like these, I start to go over my notes about how to handle skirmishes between nations, in order to get myself ready for dealing with the more difficult problems, like separating locked adults.

An experiment for anyone in a desert is to see how far you can get without water.  For experimental theatre artists living in the desert, water is other artists doing like-minded work, and audiences who are receptive to new ideas and new ways of making art.  Phoenix is a difficult place for artists to live, but it’s not necessarily a cultural desert.  There are lots and lots of bones beneath the dirt here, and the dirt does not go very deep, so the memory is really all right here, just below the surface.  It’s still a terrific experience to find traces, however.  One interesting project would be for someone who lived here awhile ago to get on a plane, book a room, and head downtown and try to find the site where Planet Earth Theatre once stood.

Like in the desert, where ghosts are often hiding in plain site, this theatre is now an empty lot that holds a fairly prominent position.  This is the main drag for the First Fridays in Phoenix, the gallery walk night that brings out thousands of people every month, in a city that’s reputed to be dead.  The rumors are, apparently, rather premature.  But that doesn’t ease the wound felt by the absence of Planet Earth.  Peter Cirino and his wife Molly did wonders for the theatre scene here a decade ago, and their names are well-remembered by the locals who are still here.

They were bold and daring, and liked to push limits and also push buttons, and it gave audiences something to  think about.  It also helped to inspire that generation of artists who were thinking the same things, but scared to say them out loud.  This was elemental underground theatre, and very few people recognized what was happening.  Kyle Lawson, of the Republic, was almost a singular voice who regularly gave them their due.  When they left, scattered to the winds, they left a hole that’s now being filled, but you’ll have to come here yourself and see what’s new in town.  Peter Cirino is still busy changing lives and inspiring young people, working as  a Professor at SDSU.  There’s justice sometimes.

Any visit to Knoxville will provide you with the experience of history, not only of the the city but of the state of Tennessee as well.  Knoxville is located along the Tennessee River, which has played a vital role for decades, in the economic and financial success of the people of the state.  The University of Tennessee is located in Knoxville, and the college town vibe is felt from the local pubs to the elegant hotels, many of which can be found here.

The city is named for Henry Knox, who was a veteran of the Revolutionary War and had been named the Secretary of War.  Two different times, Knoxville has been the state capital, first from 1796 to 1812, and then 1817 to 1819.  Knoxville remains the hub of industry and manufacturing for the state to this day.  When visiting the city there is much to see and much to do.  For those who love the great outdoors, the Smoky Mountain National Park is a short car trip away.  For those who are interested in historical sites and landmarks, the Sunsphere is always a favorite.  Built originally for the World’s Fair of 1982, the observation deck now attracts visitors due to the view…from 266 feet up, the tower offers breathtaking visuals of the downtown area of Knoxville and on a clear day, of which there are plenty, it is possible to see clear through to the Rocky Mountains.

For art lovers and cultural connoisseurs, the city hosts a festival each year called the Dogwood Arts Festival. Throughout the festival there are more than one hundred and fifty activities and events in which to partake, and the artists and craftsman set up stalls to show their work and their wares, and there are many stages that showcase musical talent from the region.  This is a sixty mile stretch of art, of gardens and of public parks that is spectacular to the eyes, the ears…well to all of the five senses.  This is one of the most beautiful of Southern cities, and with so much to do in and around the city, it is a splendid choice for a vacation or a holiday get away.

The revival of Sondheim and Wheeler’s A Little Night Music continues its Tony Award winning run at the Walter Kerr Theatre. It stars Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones in her Broadway debut. The production was directed by the acclaimed and Tony Award winning Trevor Nunn. It opened in November of 2009 to a supportive audience and received instant appreciation and success. Tickets for the show are available and many times guests in one of the hotels in New York USA are able to gain purchasing information and assistance through the concierge or hotel lobby.

The musical is based on a novel by Ingmar Bergman titled Smiles of a Summer Night. It is set in a turn of the century country home in Sweden and deals with themes of romantic attraction and the idea of endless love. Stephen Sondheim is one of the most honored and well respected composers and lyrists of this and the last century. He has had an amazing career that has spanned over fifty years and while he has written numerous songs for the stage, only one of those has crossed over to become a mainstream hit. This is the well known Send in the Clowns from A Little Night Music, which one a Grammy Award in 1976 for Judy Collins’ recording of it.

Sondheim has won numerous Tony Awards, in fact he has won more than any other composer and has created some of Broadway and musical theatre’s greatest hits. Among his many productions are Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, Follies, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Company. He also wrote the lyrics for Gypsy and West Side Story. He also holds the distinction of having won the Pulitzer Prize and he served as the President of the Dramatists Guild from 1973 to 1981. The Pulitzer was awarded in Drama for Sunday in the Park With George. A Little Night Music deals with the romantic lives and loves of various couples away for the weekend and touches on romantic ideals of eternal love. It originally opened on Broadway in 1973 at the Shubert Theatre.